Fire-stricken rural New Mexico warily eyes insurance fight - By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
Manuel and Marcy Silva combed through the charred rubble that used to be their home, searching for any salvageable bits in the wake of the largest wildfire in New Mexico history.
Manuel found two of his high school wrestling medals. Gone was the bedroom furniture Marcy's grandpa built as a gift, her wedding dress and their children's toys.
The family was only one payment away from owning their single-wide mobile home and like many other northern New Mexico residents whose homes were in the path of the flames, the Silvas were uninsured.
After scorching more than 530 square miles of the Rocky Mountain foothills, the government-sparked wildfire is helping to shine a light on what New Mexico officials are calling a crisis — where insurance coverage for everything from homes to workers compensation comes at premiums that often make it unobtainable for many in the poverty-stricken state.
New Mexico officials are banking on a California insurer relocating to the state and selling policies to low-income and underserved areas. But the multimillion-dollar merger involving California Insurance Co. has been clouded by pay-to-play allegations and remains stalled in court.
On Thursday, a California judge stopped short of granting New Mexico's request to intervene in the case but cleared the way for the state to weigh in on a proposed plan to resolve ongoing conservatorship proceedings.
Attorneys for New Mexico argued during the hearing that the need for more insurers has only intensified since the proceedings began more than three years ago. They pointed to businesses having a difficult time securing adequate workers compensation coverage.
New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas told The Associated Press that he's concerned about families not being able to insure their homes as the risk of wildfire and post-fire flooding escalate amid climate change.
"I'm very concerned that moving forward these natural disasters are either going to raise premiums or we're going to be in a deeper crisis like Florida, where insurance providers don't want to come to New Mexico because it's a very challenging market to insure," he said.
Wildfires have burned about 11,000 square miles across the U.S. so far this year, slightly outpacing the 10-year average. The season started early in New Mexico when the U.S. Forest Service failed to take into account the ongoing drought and measures meant to lessen the fire danger were whipped out of control by strong winds.
The federal government agreed to funnel $2.5 billion in recovery funds to New Mexico in what members of the state's congressional delegation described as a "down payment" on what would be a decadeslong recovery.
While the relief money has been celebrated by New Mexico officials, residents in remote villages scattered throughout the mountains say they have had a difficult time filing claims with federal emergency managers and that there's no system for quickly getting families the help they need.
Mike Maese has armored his home with sandbags and a ladder is nearby so he and his family can escape to the roof in case of more post-fire flooding.
"I'm not the type of person to go beg for help or go cry for this, that and the other but I'm tired," he said, lamenting that he has been forced to take time away from his barbershop business to clean up debris and truck in water for flushing toilets and taking showers now that the well on his property has been ruined.
He tried to get insurance years ago but it would have cost more than what he could have insured his property for.
The Silvas said the cost of insuring a single-wide mobile home manufactured in the 1970s was insurmountable. And the home used a wood-burning stove for heat — like many homes in rural New Mexico.
Marcy Silva works in information technology at New Mexico Highlands, and Manuel is employed by the San Miguel County Public Works Department. They would have opted for insurance if it was affordable.
For now, they and their two young children are living with Manuel's parents. They hope to buy another mobile home, but acknowledged that the historic pace of inflation isn't helping and there's more work to do to restore their property.
"The best way that I can explain it is that it's been like a never-ending nightmare that just seems to be getting worse and worse," Manuel said.
California Insurance Co. officials have given assurances to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and state insurance regulators that they would fill the policy gap in New Mexico.
Consumer Watchdog, a Los Angeles-based progressive advocacy group, said New Mexico regulators should be cautious about letting CIC operate in the state. The group sued California regulators in 2020 for emails and other communications after reports surfaced that California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara accepted political donations from insurers, despite promising during his 2018 campaign not to do so.
Lara at the time apologized for accepting political contributions from people associated with Applied Underwriters — CIC's parent company — and other insurers. He returned more than $80,000 to insurers and other donors with business before state regulators.
Those associated with Applied Underwriters included lobbyist Eric Serna, who retired in 2006 as New Mexico's insurance superintendent after state officials suspended him over conflict-of-interest issues.
Lara came under scrutiny again this year when Consumer Watchdog voiced new concerns about a series of transactions involving insurance industry donations and independent groups working to support his reelection.
Jerry Flanagan, the consumer group's litigation director, said the situation facing California and New Mexico homeowners when it comes to wildfire is heartbreaking. Statistics compiled by the insurance industry show about 15% of properties in the two states are at risk of wildfire. Only Montana, Idaho and Colorado have higher percentages.
"Unfortunately, what insurance companies want from political officials is usually bad for consumers," Flanagan said. "So it's kind of like an out of the frying pan into the fire situation for New Mexico consumers because you need some coverage but the history with California Insurance Co. is that they can't be trusted."
The company disputes the allegations, calling them unfounded and saying that every insurance company in California engages in some form of lobbying.
Jeffrey Silver, the company's general counsel, wrote in an email that CIC has provided coverage across California and that the number of complaints from policyholders and claimants for years has been in the single digits compared to the tens of thousands of policies issued and millions of people covered.
Silver said it's time California releases its "stranglehold" and clears the way for the company to do business in New Mexico, where he said it still would be subject to regulatory oversight and periodic reviews.
Balderas, a Democrat who will finish his last term at the end of the year, said what appeals to him is that CIC would be moving its executives and capital to New Mexico once the conservatorship is resolved and would be subject to state regulation and taxation.
"I believe you can hold a company more accountable if they're headquartered and provide services in the state," he said.
Attorneys are hoping for a resolution next year, but that leaves people like Maese at a difficult impasse.
Describing life without basic utilities and the potential for devastation that comes with each rain storm, Maese took a long pause, trying not to get choked up. He said he and his neighbors are tucked away and forgotten and that it's been hard to cope with all the devastation.
"It's just an ongoing thing over and over again," he said. "I don't see light at the end of the tunnel, but there is hope."
Water companies want NM to reuse oil and gas byproduct, despite safety and environmental concerns - Megan Gleason, Source New Mexico
A warming globe and depleting water supply are forcing conversations on alternative water sources, so some water engineers and scientists are encouraging New Mexico to start treating and using the toxic water that comes from oil and gas extraction.
But environmental advocates say the chemically infused water is unsafe and untreatable.
The New Mexico Desalination Association invited water experts to talk about how the state can move away from using traditional water sources at the New Water for New Mexico conference at the Sandia Resort and Casino on Thursday.
They talked about alternative or unconventional sources of water New Mexico could turn to as its regular supply decreases, including recycling what’s called “produced water,” a byproduct of extraction. But since this toxic water is prohibited for reuse for anything other than the oil and gas industry in New Mexico, speakers suggested revising New Mexico’s water laws to make this happen.
WHAT IS PRODUCED WATER?
Produced water comes out of the ground along with oil and gas when it’s extracted. The water, often high in saline, can contain oil residues, dissolved solids and toxic chemicals.
Scientists are exploring whether produced water is a viable option in replacing or supplementing freshwater amid declining supply.
Hydraulic fracking is a common method to extract oil and gas, a process that utilizes high-pressure fluid injections to break rock formations to get fossil fuels — and, incidentally, produced water.
Rebecca Sobel is the director of WildEarth Guardians and organized a news conference just a few miles away from the New Water conference to speak against reusing produced water. She said it takes a lot of water to frack in the first place — about 9 million gallons for each drilled well in New Mexico, though the number varies, according to the NMED.
“Our state’s precious freshwater is pumped 10,000 feet into the ground, coming back as a chemical cocktail known as — quote — produced water,” Sobel said.
As New Mexico continues to yield record amounts of oil and gas and is among one of the top oil and gas suppliers in the country, a huge amount of produced water comes with that, too.
Last year, the oil and gas industry in New Mexico generated about 60 billion gallons of produced water, which equates to over 160 million gallons per day — the same amount of total daily municipal water consumption in the state.
John Grizz Deal is the CEO of IX Power Clean Water, a company that treats contaminated water. He brought up that a lot more produced water is generated in the extraction of oil and gas than fossil fuels. Four to seven times more produced water comes out of the ground than oil and gas, according to the New Mexico Environment Department.
IX Secretary Deborah Deal-Blackwell said the chemicals benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene — commonly referred to as BTEX — can be present in the water, and those are deadly to consume.
That’s why environmental advocates met on the banks of the Rio Grande to protest any use of produced water. Organizer Sobel said the water is too toxic to treat.
“As this new water conference continues down the street, we’re up the river trying to level the playing field, calling for the necessary protections for New Mexico, for our public health and for freshwater,” Sobel said. “New Mexicans deserve better.”
A STATE EFFORT TO STUDY OPTIONS
The state is still trying to learn more information about produced water, and Environment Department spokesperson Matthew Maez said rules and regulations on potential expanded use won’t come out until there’s more science-based knowledge about it.
The New Mexico Produced Water Research Consortium is a partnership between NMED and New Mexico State University that started up about three years ago and is studying produced water.
Once the state knows more, Maez said, NMED will draft rules and regulations around it. He said until that happens, the department won’t approve any permits to use it outside of the oil and gas sector.
But many speakers at the conference pointed to other states reusing produced water as a sign that it’s OK, like irrigation use in California. Other states also use it for irrigation, like Wyoming and Montana, but many states are still trying to research produced water amid a lack of in-depth information at the federal level.
Deal said New Mexico should follow California’s lead in reusing produced water with the new technologies — still being studied for efficacy — that make it possible to get contaminants out. “It’s a real nasty stew, but the good news is we know how to treat it,” he said.
Deal-Blackwell said people don’t know enough about the stigmatized subject of recycling water sources.“It’s our fault,” she said. “We’re not educating them.” Produced water could be used for crops, livestock and industrial purposes, she said.
“We can clean and use that produced water without fear of it harming anyone,” Deal-Blackwell said.
Not everyone agrees, though. For instance, there’s controversy on the produced water irrigation in Kern County, California. Although the California water quality board approved it, people have pointed to potential threats to wildlife and the environment, and an overall lack of information on produced water.
Elaine Cimino, director of Common Ground Rising, said Californians are even boycotting those agricultural products out of fear of health risks.
Eleanor Bravo, board chair member of New Energy Economy, also brought up moral questions about capitalizing on access to water. Many of the water companies that support the usage of produced water are the same ones that would make money by treating it.
“Water is a human right, a basic human right that should never be commodified,” Bravo said.
Ultimately, trying to make produced water an alternative water source is just a ploy to keep boosting the oil and gas industry, Sobel said. The industry is thriving in New Mexico, generating billions of dollars for the state but, she pointed out, also leaving tons of environmental destruction in its wake.
“It’s no secret that the industry’s strategy is to relabel their waste,” she said, “so that they can more cheaply dump it into rivers, onto crops and into drinking water supplies.”
Defense motions could sidetrack trial in Taos compound case - Associated Press
A judge has ruled five defendants are competent to stand trial more than four years after they were found in a squalid New Mexico compound with 11 malnourished children and the body of a young boy.
But multiple motions filed by defense lawyers last week may slow the proceedings again.
Taos County sheriff's officials raided the compound in remote northern New Mexico in August 2018, saying they also discovered a firing range and firearms.
In a second search days later, authorities reported recovering the decomposing remains of a 3-year-old boy from an underground tunnel.
Authorities said the child was the son of one of the five adult suspects and had been reported missing by his mother in Georgia.
All five members of the extended family are charged with conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States and providing material support to terrorists.
Their attorneys said the defendants would not be facing terrorism-related charges if they were not Muslim.
Albuquerque TV station KOB reports that defense lawyers filed motions last week trying to get the judge to drop all kidnapping charges.
The group says they're immune to kidnapping statutes because the dead boy's father had legal custody of him at the time.
They also say the autopsy report lists the official cause of death as undetermined.
In addition, defense attorneys are asking the judge to throw out any evidence the sheriff's office and FBI obtained from the compound during execution of the search warrant.
False election claims overwhelm local efforts to push back - By Morgan Lee Associated Press
Republican county commissioners in this swath of ranching country in New Mexico's high desert have tried everything they can think of to persuade voters their elections are secure.
They approved hand-counting of ballots from the primary election in their rural county, encouraged the public to observe security testing of ballot machines and tasked their county manager with overseeing those efforts to make sure they ran smoothly. None of that seems enough.
Here and elsewhere, Republicans as well as Democrats are paying a price for former President Donald Trump's relentless complaints and false claims about the 2020 election he lost.
Many Torrance County voters still don't trust voting machines or election tallies, a conspiracy-fueled lack of faith that persists in rural areas across the U.S. Just weeks before consequential midterm elections, such widespread skepticism suggests that no matter the outcome, many Americans may not accept the results.
"Confidence that that vote is accurately counted and tabulated is not there," said Ryan Schwebach, a grain farmer who is chairman of the three-member, all-Republican Torrance County Board of County Commissioners.
After a backlash this summer over the county's certification of its primary results, Schwebach surveyed county residents who don't attend public meetings. They, too, told him they weren't sure they could trust election results.
"It's the overall system that comes into question," he said. "So how do you challenge that, how do you get your answers?"
The belief that voting machines are being manipulated to sway the outcome of races is being promoted by Trump and his allies, many of whom have been spreading conspiracy theories throughout the country for nearly two years.
Their messages have penetrated deeply into the Republican Party, despite no evidence of manipulation or widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election. That finding has been supported by multiple reviews in battleground states, by judges who have rejected dozens of court cases, by Trump's own Department of Justice and top officials in his administration.
The distrust erupted in Torrance County earlier this year, as commissioners were set to certify the results from the state's June 7 primary. Torrance was among a handful of rural New Mexico counties that considered delaying certification as crowds gave voice to conspiracy theories surrounding voting equipment.
Angry residents denounced the results and the commissioners' certification at a meeting -- a vote taken after the county elections clerk reported that the local election was secure and accurate. Those in the audience hurled insults at the commissioners, calling them "cowards," "traitors" and "rubber stamp puppets."
The commissioners responded to the vitriol by taking several unprecedented steps in an attempt to restore trust in voting and ballot counting.
They ordered an independent recount of primary election results by hand and assigned the county manager to recruit veteran poll workers and volunteers for two days of eye-straining efforts to sort and tally ballot images, with additional recounts. They also had her oversee testing and certification of the county's vote tabulators.
"I'm kind of pioneering this, and I'm sure I'm not going to be perfect in it, but I can tell you that I'm trying," said Janice Barela, the county manager overseeing the recount. "How do you know if it's the hand tally that's right? How do you know if it's a tabulator that's right? … What I'd like to see in all of this is the election process work."
It's not clear whether her efforts will satisfy local doubts about the accuracy of elections — or add to them.
Bill Mendenhall, a registered Republican nearing retirement age, said anger still smolders in the community over the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Trump won two-thirds of the vote in Torrance County.
"I don't think it burns that hot, but it does burn," said Mendenhall, a correctional officer at the maximum-security Penitentiary of New Mexico. He was tending to a small herd of goats beneath an old windmill on his 18-acre ranch. "Of the people I work with, 90% of them is angry. A lot of people think that Trump was cheated."
Brady Ness, a 37-year-old manager of a car dealership who grew up on a ranch in Estancia, said he does not trust Dominion Voting Systems machines that are used to tally paper ballots across New Mexico. The machines are a frequent target of conspiracy theories, and Ness hopes to see a transition to hand counting in future elections, though current state law mandates machine tallies.
"Even if they're Democrats or people I don't like or get along with, I would trust them over machines," Ness said.
He recently left the Republican Party amid profound frustration with the state and federal governments, which he says are not serving the needs of the people.
"I wouldn't be shocked if we didn't have a general election," he said. "I think things in this country are falling apart very quickly."
At the same time, Bill Peifer, a local treasurer for the Democratic Party, warns that not everyone who questions the elections may have the same motive.
"Some of the people casting doubt I think honestly don't trust the machines," he said. "And there are others who just want to make a mess."
The dour outlook in the county of 15,000 has been propelled by the same forces at work in many other states. In New Mexico, doubts about the 2020 election were fueled by a lawsuit from Trump's campaign and a fake set of electors willing to certify him.
More recently, an assortment of local and out-of-state Trump allies have held forums throughout the state promoting conspiracy theories, including former White House strategist Steve Bannon, MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell and the Republican nominee for secretary of state, Audrey Trujillo.
At the forefront is David Clements, a New Mexico-based former prosecutor and former college professor. At conventions, church gatherings and local forums, he advocates for eliminating electronic election equipment and exonerating many of the defendants charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
At a presentation last month to about 60 people at a public library in Albuquerque, Clements described voting equipment in New Mexico as intentionally vulnerable to fraud and painted many county officials as complicit.
"We're never going to stop the bleeding unless we get rid of these machines," he said. "It's a foundational issue."
Deep-seated distrust in elections has inspired independent challengers in the November general elections for the seats held by Schwebach and Commissioner Kevin McCall. Both of their opponents have stated that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected president.
McCall is seeking re-election while working long hours at his pumpkin farm, which features a haunted house for Halloween and employs more than 400 seasonal workers.
"We care," he said in a recent interview. "We put Janice on that to be the one sole job, to evaluate and provide trust in the election."
He expressed exasperation that the efforts do not seem to have paid off so far.
"If they really want to replace me, replace me," he said. "I'm not doing this for the money."
The county released results on Thursday from its hand count of primary ballots, showing discrepancies between those tallies and the machine count in June, though not enough to change individual races.
Experts say machine tabulators have been shown to be more accurate than hand counts, which are susceptible to human error. Nevertheless, the results were greeted as vindication by doubters.
"While the numbers are new information, the fact that machines are untrustworthy is not new," declared Jennette Hunt of Estancia.
Illegal border crossings to US from Mexico hit annual high - By Elliot Spagat Associated Press
A surge in migration from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua in September brought the number of illegal crossings to the highest level ever recorded in a fiscal year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The year-end numbers reflect deteriorating economic and political conditions in some countries, the relative strength of the U.S. economy and uneven enforcement of Trump-era asylum restrictions.
Migrants were stopped 227,547 times in September at the U.S. border with Mexico, the third-highest month of Joe Biden's presidency. It was up 11.5% from 204,087 times in August and 18.5% from 192,001 times in September 2021.
In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, migrants were stopped 2.38 million times, up 37% from 1.73 million times the year before, according to figures released late Friday night. The annual total surpassed 2 million for the first time in August and is more than twice the highest level during Donald Trump's presidency in 2019.
Nearly 78,000 migrants from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua were stopped in September, compared to about 58,000 from Mexico and three countries of northern Central America that have historically accounted for most of the flow.
The remarkable geographic shift is at least partly a result of Title 42, a public health rule that suspends rights to see asylum under U.S. and international law on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.
Due to strained diplomatic relations, the U.S. cannot expel migrants to Venezuela, Cuba or Nicaragua. As a result, they are largely released in the United States to pursue their immigration cases.
Title 42 authority has been applied 2.4 million times since it began in March 2020 but has fallen disproportionately on migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
U.S. officials say Venezuelan migration to the United States has plunged more than 85% since Oct. 12, when the U.S. began expelling Venezuelans to Mexico under Title 42. At the same time, the Biden administration pledged to admit up to 24,000 Venezuelans to the United States on humanitarian parole if they apply online with a financial sponsor and enter through an airport, similar to how tens of thousands of Ukrainians have come since Russia invaded their country.
The first four Venezuelans paroled into the United States arrived Saturday — two from Mexico, one from Guatemala, one from Peru — and hundreds more have been approved to fly, the Homeland Security Department said.
"While this early data is not reflected in the (September) report, it confirms what we've said all along: When there is a lawful and orderly way to enter the country, individuals will be less likely to put their lives in the hands of smugglers and try to cross the border unlawfully," said CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus.
The expansion of Title 42 for Venezuelans to be expelled to Mexico came despite the administration's attempt to end the public health authority in May, which was blocked by a federal judge.
Venezuelans represented the second-largest nationality at the border after Mexicans for the second straight month, being stopped 33,804 times in September, up 33% from 25,361 times in August.
Cubans, who are participating in the largest exodus from the Caribbean island to the United States since 1980, were stopped 26,178 times at the border in September, up 37% from 19,060 in August.
Nicaraguans were stopped 18,199 times in September, up 55% from 7,298 times in August.
The report is the last monthly reading of migration flows before U.S. midterm elections, an issue that many Republicans have emphasized in campaigns to capture control of the House and Senate. Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee released a one-sentence statement Saturday in response to the numbers: "You've got to be kidding."